The Louis-Marie Herbarium at Laval University is the largest university herbarium in Canada. With close to 800,000 specimens within its walls, the task of computerizing this collection is monumental. To date, about 37% of the specimens, mostly vascular plants, but also bryophytes and lichens, have been digitized. The goal of digitizing the collection of the Louis-Marie Herbarium is to facilitate management and research in the collection, but especially to make the biodiversity data of this collection more accessible to researchers and the general public. Thanks to the collaboration of the Quebec Center for Biodiversity Science, the Herbarium has been able to set up a collaborative portal to computerize the collection. Participants use images of herbarium sheets deposited on the portal to decipher and transcribe essential information such as the name of the species, the place and date of harvesting, or the name of the person who harvested the specimen. This tag information, sometimes handwritten, sometimes typed, but generally complex and very different from each other, is usually best interpreted by individuals, even if digital recognition technologies exist. We hope that this new portal will increase the rate of digitization of the Louis-Marie Herbarium. Biodiversity data from the Louis-Marie Herbarium are disseminated on the Herbarium site (herbier.ulaval.ca) and deposited on several biodiversity data aggregators such as Canadensys, GBIF, the Consortium of North American Lichen and Bryophyte Herbaria and iDigBio. Click here for more info.

Since its adoption in 1987, the Policy for the Protection of Shores, Coastlines and Floodplains (PPRLPI) has been updated several times, the last time in 2017, in order to resolve certain enforcement issues. As part of the modernization of the authorization system under the Environment Quality Act (EQA), the adoption of the Act respecting the conservation of wetlands and water (CWHMA) and the implementation of the new Quebec Water Strategy (QWS), a complete overhaul of the provisions of the PPRLPI must be carried out in the medium term in order to make the necessary amendments. These would concern both the management of floodplains and the protection of shorelines and coastlines, in continental, coastal and possibly wetland environments. A fundamental reflection on the redesign of this Policy must be initiated. The integration of new knowledge and the consideration of climate change also motivate this redesign, as do the findings on the problems of application and uniformity of the minimum normative framework by municipalities. Considering these needs, the Direction de l'agroenvironnement et du milieu hydrique (DAEMH) decided to call on the Centre de la science de la biodiversité du Québec (CSBQ) to conduct a critical study of the regulatory measures of the European Union and some member countries as well as their implementation. Access the report here.

- Understand the social opportunities and constraints for protecting the habitats of various threatened or vulnerable wildlife species within a variety of socio-economic and cultural contexts. - Understand landowner perceptions, social responses and potential conflicts related to proposed conseravtion interventions of private wildlife habitat. - Identify barriers to conservation resulting from land use patterns and social, economic and political institutions - Define the collaboration, education and awareness approaches to be prioritized to carry out legal conservation interventions on private land. - Evaluate and compare governance and social organization arrangements for the development and enhancement of natural resources on private land in relation to wildlife conservation issues. Click here for more info.

The Dialogue was a 3 day conference, forming part of a series of events organised by the UNESCO-SCBD Joint Programme of Work, which aimed to explore the meaning of values of the links between biological and cultural diversity at the regional level and the subsequent implications for solutions of global problems humanity is currently facing, focussing on indigenous peoples. In particular, the Dialogue aimed to promote exchange and co-creation of knowledge between different actors to contribute to better understanding of the interlinkages between biological and cultural dimensions of diversity and the applications to resource management and decision-making processes. It also aimed to raise awareness and recognition regarding the role of indigenous languages and of local and indigenous knowledge and management systems, which provide the foundations for a rich and flourishing biocultural diversity. Click here for more info.

Dr. Etienne Yergeau, professor at the INRS, has received a grant from the Canadian Foundation for Innovation to better understand the interactions between plants and micro-organisms found in the soil. "At their roots, plants exchange services with micro-organisms", explains the professor, " The composition of this community of fungi, bacteria and other microscopic creatures changes depending on external conditions, but we have very little understanding of the dynamics which control this. If we can decipher who does what and how, we could use these interactions to help plants stay healthy in difficult conditions". This research project is also financed by the ministry of Education and Teaching of Quebec.

An Art-Science collaboration aiming to understand how the sounds of our environment influence us as humans and to explore the relationship between humans and the world around us, moving away from an anthropocentric view of ecosystemic interactions to a holistic one. Click here for more info.

This interactive visualisation of the public trees of Montreal can be used to easily identify trees on the streets of the city. The tree inventory, which currently contains more than 350,000 trees is performed by municipal employees and the data is made available by the city on their open data portal. Development of this tool was started at an open data hackathon, and was continued by Guillaume Larocque, QCBS research professional. Click here for more info.

In 1992, Canada signed the Convention on Biological Diversity that was then endorsed the same year by the Quebec government. Article 7 of the Convention requires that signing parties identify and monitor components of biodiversity that are important for conservation and sustainable development. However, intensification of land development and climate change is impacting biodiversity in many ways. The Quebec government hopes to be proactive and to forecast effects of natural disasters and human-driven disturbances on biodiversity and to react accordingly by protecting habitats, or by managing populations in a more sustainable way. In light of this, the government has decided to ask the QCBS to improve knowledge on the economic value of ecosystem services for Quebec's business sector.

The Canadian Airborne Biodiversity Observatory is a collaboration between five Canadian researchers in biodiversity and remote sensing science. Its main objective will be to study and understand the changes in plant biodiversity at a Canada wide scale using the emerging spectranomics approach. CABO will use high precision spectranomics to measure the spectral signatures of Canadian plants at several spatial scale and coming from different ecosystems, while using standardized protocols. This way, CABO will build a large spectral database of Canadian plants and thus revolutionize the way biodiversity data are acquired in Canada and throughout the world. CABO will reinforce other international initiatives in spectranomics and will position Canada as the world leader in biodiversity science and conservation. The funding for CABO is NSERC’s fourth Discovery Frontiers award, valued at $4 million over 4 years.